LitQueuelitqueue

After

A Vision of Fire

Gillian Anderson2014

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • The Ganymede Club

    Charles Sheffield1995

    A psychiatrist and a investigator look into a series of murders and a conspiracy on Ganymede. It is a hard science fiction mystery.

    Same tense register, still conspiracy

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Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Beelzebub's tales to his grandson

    Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff1950

    An extraterrestrial being explains the history and strange behaviors of humanity to his grandson during a long space voyage.

    tense → meditative, still science fiction

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

  • Nova Express

    William S. Burroughs1964

    An experimental narrative uses the cut-up technique to depict a war between intergalactic criminals and the police. It is a collage of imagery.

    tense → sardonic, still science fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

  • Embassytown

    China Miéville2011

    On a distant planet, humans coexist with aliens whose language is literal truth. A new arrival threatens the fragile linguistic balance.

    tense → meditative, still science fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

    John Gray1992

    A guide to heterosexual relationships that attributes communication conflicts to inherent psychological differences between men and women.

    tense → earnest

    pace-1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Kaiju Preservation Society

    John Scalzi2022

    A food delivery driver joins a secret organization that travels to an alternate Earth to care for massive, dinosaur-like creatures.

    tense → playful, still science fiction

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Wildfire

    Hannah Grace2023

    Two college students who had a one-night stand discover they are working as counselors at the same summer camp.

    tense → playful

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-1

Faster

3 more ↓

  • The 22 Murders of Madison May

    Max Barry2021

    A journalist pursues a killer who murders the same woman across multiple parallel realities. The story follows her jumps between different lives.

    tense → propulsive, still technothriller

    pace+1·prose0·bleak0

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

    A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.

    tense → wry

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Ready Player One

    Ernest Cline2008

    A teenager in a dystopian future hunts for a digital easter egg inside a massive simulation. The quest relies on 1980s pop culture trivia.

    tense → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Slower

3 more ↓

  • Invisible Cities

    Italo Calvino1972

    Marco Polo describes fifty-five imaginary cities to Kublai Khan. The book is a series of short, prose-poem meditations on urban existence.

    tense → meditative

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

  • Gödel, Escher, Bach

    Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

    An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

    tense → playful

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak-1

  • Ulysses

    James Joyce1914

    Three characters wander through Dublin on a single day in 1904. Each chapter uses a different literary style to mimic thoughts and sensations.

    tense → playful

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • Hellspark

    Janet Kagan1988

    A linguist travels to a new planet to investigate a murder. She must determine if the local species is sentient while navigating a conspiracy.

    Same tense register, still science fiction

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+2

  • The Running Man

    Richard Bachman

    A man enters a deadly reality show to fund medical care for his daughter. He must survive thirty days while the entire world hunts him for money.

    tense → propulsive, still science fiction

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+2

  • Strangers

    Gardner Dozois1978

    An artist living among the alien Cian on a distant planet falls in love with a local woman and attempts to navigate their incompatible biology.

    tense → elegiac, still science fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+2